Korean Jacks and Summer Snacks

I feel like talking about two particular Korean things I find interesting, so here I go.

First off is a little game called Gong-gi. The playground game I can best compare it to is Jacks, except there are no rubber balls involved and instead of jacks you play with tiny plastic pebbles.

The basic idea of play is to drop five of the gong-gi on a table and then collect them one by one. To collect a selected stone, you must toss a different stone in the air, pick up the one you want from the table, and catch the tossed stone. Then you collect the rest of the stones in the same manner until you have all five in your hand again. Next you drop them on the table again and begin the process once more, but collecting two at a time. So, toss one in the air, scoop up two, catch the stone, and so on. As you might guess, next comes three at a time, then four.

Finally you toss the handful of plastic stones lightly in the air and catch as many as you can on the back of your hand. However many gong-gi you can then toss off the back of your hand and catch is the number of points you've gained.

Needless to say, I've never made a single point playing Gong-gi. But I've been thoroughly impressed by my students who zip through the whole process and make it look easy. It takes a lot of coordination, and I have none. I usually whip the gong-gi across the room in a frantic attempt to pick them off the table. A Korean teacher told me that men have trouble playing the game because their hands are too big to pick up the tiny glittery stones quickly. Maybe if we were playing with something more suitable for my big meaty hands, like hubcaps, I'd have a better chance.

The other thing is a dessert called Pat Bing Soo, which is basically a snow cone that went totally insane. As my friend Sam knows, Korea has a wondrous variety of frozen treats, but this icy dessert is really something else.

It starts off with a bowl of shaved ice topped with red bean paste, and from there all manner of foods are piled on. Ice cream, yogurt, milk, green tea, coffee, cereal flakes, rice cake, canned fruit, bananas, kiwi, strawberries, syrups, chocolate sauce, jelly bits, and cherry tomatoes. Any possible combination of these things can appear in the dessert depending on where you get it.

This is basically my third summer in Korea, and I've only tried this dessert for the first time in the last week. The verdict: It's just what you'd think. A strange mix of flavours, temperatures, and textures. The more I ate it, the more I felt like I was eating groceries that got spilled in the snow. Since it sits on a pile of ice, it's certainly refreshing on a hot summer day, which is obviously why it's a hit in humid Seoul.

I'll have to try it again to appreciate it more, since each time will be a different combination of toppings, and maybe that's the real charm of this hodgepodge dessert.